


distributed solutions to problem solving

by LittleBlackGoldfish



Series: Bemily Week 2021 [2]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Fake Marriage, M/M, Secret Agent, plans within plans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleBlackGoldfish/pseuds/LittleBlackGoldfish
Summary: It'll work because it has to.Bemily Week 2021 Day 2 - Secret Agent
Relationships: Benji Applebaum/Jesse Swanson, Emily Junk/Beca Mitchell
Series: Bemily Week 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2173860
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	distributed solutions to problem solving

Beca doesn't do nervous.

People who have expectations get nervous, and Beca stopped having those when she was thirteen and she figured out her dad was leaving before her mom did.

So what she is, isn't, can't be, nervous. It has to be something else. Frustrated. Or annoyed.

Yeah, annoyed sounds good. Even works for her cover. Beca Michaels, annoyed at her wife for making them late to Applebaum's yearly ICCA Championship watch party, is definitely petty enough to sneak away at some point.

Right.

Okay.

She can make this work. Whole op was designed as low-risk in the first place.

Aubrey saddling her with a barely qualified analyst won't—

Emily appears at the top of the stairs dressed in a black suit, with a deep blue dress shirt underneath and a tie to match, her hair pulled back so that only a few short locks escape to frame her face. Something about it just short circuits Beca's brain completely. Taking a few tentative steps down, the other agent gives her a small, weak, sort of smile and she immediately wants to rush over and coax it into something bigger. Brighter. Stronger.

Fuck.

Right should have counted on that.

No one in their right mind is going to be able to play the 'neglectful, work-obsessed' spouse to Emily's 'trophy-wife,' she's just too fucking sweet for that. Beca Michaels has to be smitten, attentive, loving. Downright obsessive, maybe even possessive.

Yeah, that can work.

But it means _Emily_ will have to take care of getting the worm into Applebaum's local net. That thought immediately sends Beca's gut into knots. If she's caught the other agent won't have her wealth of experience.

This was probably Aubrey's whole plan from the beginning.

"Change of plans, you're going to have to deliver the package," she says as Emily reaches the bottom of the stairs finally.

"What?"

Beca sighs, "I'm not going to be able to play neglectful wife with you looking like," she gestures to Emily's whole fit, "Well... _that_."

"Oh."

She holds out the innocuous little usb drive, snatching it away a second before Emily's uncertain hand reaches out to grab it.

"Yeah. So I need you to tell me right now if you can do this. No bullshitting, no maybes. Yes or no. Yes, we go. No, we scrap the op and find some other angle."

Beca lifts her brow and stares Emily straight in the eye. There's a long moment where Emily stares back, her mouth working as the little gears in her head turn.

Nothing prepares you for your first time on point, it doesn't matter how many other ops you've been on before it's a pure rush of stress and adrenaline straight to the heart. Her first time she barely had time to process. One minute they'd been strolling along, pretending like they weren't trying highly trained hostile agents, and then next Luke's blood was on her hands and Beca had to get three agents and a dead body out of a high-rise swarming with guys carrying semi-automatic weapons.

She knows a little bit of what it's like to find yourself suddenly under intense pressure.

Finally, after forever, Emily nods her head.

"Not good enough," Beca shakes hers, "Need to hear the words."

Emily swallows, then, "Yes. I can do it."

Steady. Calm. Good.

She might actually be ready.

*  
*

Applebaum's place is a sprawling three story mansion sitting on something like thirty acres of 'wilderness' that is anything but. Whole perimeter is laced with enough sensors to detect if a mouse farts. Actual onsite security is light, but if he even gets wind that the place has been breached Beca's pretty sure he'll lock the local system out of his wider network and trash whatever sensitive storage he's got local to rebuild later elsewhere.

No, the whole point is that Applebaum never knows he's been compromised.

Smart guys like him plan for every contingency except for the one where they're not as smart as they think they are. Hence the more than two years of work she put into setting up the whole op.

All of it now depending on a wet behind the ears analyst 's field skills and Beca's acting chops. No biggie.

They park on a gravel lot by the rode, next to a host of cars worth more than either of their yearly salaries, and hoof it the rest of the way to the front entrances. It's a lovely spring evening, there is a breeze and just enough heat in the air to make it comfortable to step outside.

Up ahead other guests mingle by the doors; the crowd for this is a mix of nerdy-tech billionaires and millionaires, just-this-side of legal financial people, polite company mobsters from half the world, and Applebaum's friends (mostly from college, back when 'Benji' did a cappella himself) and friends of friends. That last group is where Beca and Emily fit in. Almost a year and a half ago Beca made friends with his college best-friend, one Jesse Swanson currently trying to break into the Hollywood scene after having cut his teeth as a video editor for some online content platform, over (at first) shared industry connections (Beca ostensibly works for a small time cloud-computing solutions company and Jesse, having worked in the internet world, is familiar with that sort of thing) and then a serendipitous shared love of a cappella.

She played 'hard to get' for most of that time, playing up the whole 'workaholic without a social life angle.' Jesse is the kind of guy who if he sees an injured bird he just can't help himself and has to try and nurse it back to health (see college aged Benji Applebaum), and so with just the right amount of encouragement Beca wormed her way into his trust. Every few months, whenever he was in Hollywood again, he'd insist she let him show her classic movies. On account of her film education being tragically lacking.

Of course he's never met Emily, who didn't 'exist' in Beca's life until about three weeks ago, but she's not worried about that. Thankfully she's dropped enough (thankfully again) vague hints about her personal life that he should be expecting something… not ideal.

It was going to be part of her whole plan; have him latch onto the idea of saving Emily, or at least comforting her, creating enough confusion and distraction that Beca could slip away and pull off the op. Fundamentally nothing has changed. They're just going to, remix things. Beca slips her arm in around Emily's waist, feeling the gentle sloping curve and the play of muscle underneath even through the layers of her suit.

Shit. Not the usual analyst's physique.

Putting that distinctly unhelpful though from her brain, she says, "Remember I'm your doting, insecure wife and you're— "

"Suffocated and flirty, looking for a savior. Yes. I know."

Beca squeezes at Emily's waist, not hard, but enough to get her focus.

"Dude, this isn't a game. Remember your character, remember the mission, put away your ego."

From beside her she hears the other agent sigh and then there's an arm draping over her shoulders and a hand playing lightly along her collarbone. Beca almost shudders.

"Yes, darling."

Then they're walking up the front steps.

Jesse finds them just after they get past the packed front hall, avoiding unfamiliar faces and voices.

"Beca!"

Pushing past the crowd he trots up to them, up to her really, wearing this plus maroon sort of suit jacket over a maroon dress shirt and tie. She recognizes it instantly as the performance uniform of his and Applebaum's college group, Treble-something (he's mentioned it once or twice).

She puts on a wide smile that's only a quarter false (he's genuinely pretty chill), and waves back, "Jesse!"

He pulls her into a hug and Beca, letting go of Emily, let's him. Once he's stepped back she slips her arm back around the other woman's waste, a little aggressively, without looking.

"This is Emily. Emily, Jesse."

She can feel the agent start under her fingers, just a little jump of the muscles, before she moves forward a step, reaching out with one hand towards Jesse. Warm smile lightning up her face.

"Oh, yes, Beca has told me so much about you," Emily says, laying one hand over his as she takes it.

There's just enough flirtiness to it that it would be setting off all of Beca's alarm bells if she were really as insecure as she's playing it. Which only means she has to respond. Just a quick tightening of her hand at Emily's waist, not a pinch but close to it.

"Really? 'Cause I was starting to think you were a figment of her imagination, or one of those rubber dolls. Felt like I didn't even know your name until a month ago!"

He laughs, but he really hadn't. It's amazing what people will convince themselves of if given a push. Easy enough to say she did, that she must have at least once, and let him fill in the reasons on his own.

Emily answers his laugh with one of her own, moving a hand to his shoulder and rubbing.

Okay. That's laying it on a little thick.

Beca pulls gently at Emily, not enough to move her, just enough that she gets the idea and steps by on her own. They don't want him trying for a threesome or something.

"Dude, this place is insane," she says, "How exactly are you friends with someone with actual taste?"

"Haha, simple enough, I tricked him. You know, by helping him out and being nice to him and keeping in touch; weirdly enough it worked."

"Sounds fake, but okay."

Jesse laughs again, smiling broadly, "Come on, I'll show you to the real party."

Part of Beca would dearly like to mix and mingle. She's sure that with just a few hours she could have enough to kick off half a dozen more ops, but if things go to plan Beca knows they'll be getting enough for hundreds, and so instead she follows.

Winding through the wood panels corridors, past smoke filled rooms and balconies filled with whispers, they eventually make their way to a quiet room looking more like a frat's basement than a room in a mansion. There are bean bags lining the floor (though thankfully, proper chairs along the walls), a huge flatscreen along one wall, at least three mini-fridges scattered throughout, a pool table, two tables piled high with every over-salted junk food and sugary treat imaginable, four arcade cabinets, a whole tangle of wires and consoles systems beneath the tv, and star wars/trek toys lining every available inch of open shelf space. About two dozen people are scattered around, some laughing quietly from the bean bags at whatever is on screen, others grazing at the snacks, and the rest clustered in pairs and trios throughout.

Virtually every eye shoots up when they walk in and a second later roughly half the distinctly gender imbalanced crowd (there are a third as many girls as guys) lets out a loud,

"JESSE!"

Basking in the attention, the man in question practically beams.

"Come on, I'll introduce you guys."

And that leads to roughly thirty minutes of them wandering around the room, from section to section as he does just that. First there's Donald ('and that's Donald's wife, Sabrina, in the corner with Lilly') and Kolio and Brian sprawled out on the bean bags either high or jet-lagged. Then a man who's name is, no kidding, Unicycle. After that, Greg and Michael and Brian having some sort of heated discussion about underwear and Steven who only barely looks up from his phone to acknowledge them.

Katherine and Jessica and Bryan. Someone named, and again not kidding here, Hat. Though of course Beca assumes in both cases those are nicknames too ingrained to drop.

Then there's Barb and Ray, Nate and Tyler and Jourdan and Rose. Sawyer, Chase, Adam, and Gilbert.

No Benji.

Which is… honestly Beca's not sure.

She needs to get eyes on him to make sure Emily has her opening. But there's time.

Beca is browsing through the selection of drinks in one of the mini-fridges — an eclectic mix of sodas, those foul barely-flavored seltzer water drinks, and imported beers — when she feels someone sidle up next to her and lean 'casually' against the wall.

"Your girl, Donald starts, "Where did you guys meet?"

Her heartbeat immediately ratchets up a notch. Shit. Please don't tell her Emily has been made.

"What?"

Okay. What are their options if she has? Bug out. Pretend to be here for one of Applebaum's guests. Lie, act dumb fat and happy. Lie big.

Too many options.

"College? Or did Jesse introduce you?"

Huh?

  
"It's just… she looks so familiar."

Oh thank god. Probably she just looks like someone he knew once or they had a passing encounter like years ago.

Beca finally looks back, over her shoulder, and is suddenly struck with his alive Emily is sitting there talking to Jesse about- whatever it is they're talking about; hair tumbling down the back of her suit, a little slip of her pale neck peaking through, her cheeks flushed as she smiles and laughs brightly. Something in her chest twinges. Donald laughs softly beside her.

"Yeah, I know that."

She glances up to find him softly gazing across the room at Sabrina.

Fuck. Right, she can do this, they have a whole backstory worked out.

"Um, we met at work— " shit, what? No, on a dating app you idiot. Shit. " —we, uh- used to work together, I mean. Just got to talking one day, and that was that."

"Huh, so she's not famous?"

"Only for ruining her cousin's wedding when she was seven."

"Must be one of those faces," he says.

Beca nods, "Yeah, well," she grabs two random beers and holds them up, "Should really get back with these."

"For sure, for sure."

When she reaches Emily and Jesse, the bottles clinking in her hand, the other agent is in the middle of telling some story involving… the rapper Tupac?

"... and when I got back Tupac had chewed through the bottom of the bag and eaten half of it. That's a lesson for you; always lock up before you leave."

"Here, honey," she says, offering one of the beers as she slips down onto the bean bag next to Emily.

Glancing first at the beer and then up at Beca, Emily shoots her a confused little look. Training beats it into new agents that you don't drink on an op, but sometimes you can't avoid it because either your mark or your in insists on it. Nothing to do but learn to handle yourself, build up a tolerance.

Beca shrugs and clinks their bottles together. It's a little awkward because the lack of support means that her arm actually ends up underneath Emily's thigh at first and she has to wiggle and shift to move it back to her waist. At one point she accidentally cops' a feel and Emily squeaks.

Jesse grins at Beca. Finally she gets her arm situated correctly.

"So, Emily, what do you do?"

"Oh, I'm a market trends analyst for a small marketing firm, we mainly work with the California Fresh Fruit Association, forecasting… "

She lets the conversations wash over her, half listening, as Beca puts most of her attention on firming her mental map of the social network of the party. Something about it doesn't quite fit. Most of the guys are clearly college friends of Applebaums through his and Jesse's a cappella group, but a lot of them don't fit.

Only half of the party reacted when Jesse showed up. The others clearly recognized him, but they didn't have the same immediate emotional response.

Beca would bet only most of these people being first time invitees, just like her. But why? Is it some sort of special year? Jesse and Benji are both the same age as Beca, so it shouldn't be. In her line of business it's hard not to fall into the paranoia trap, and yet sometimes people really are out to get her and the weird things that happen around her are because of it.

Somehow, while she's caught up in her thoughts her hand ends up intertwined with Emily's. The feeling of her knuckles under Beca's fingers stills some of the racing thoughts.

The door opens and instinctively Beca looks over and freezes — or seems to at least — before whipping around to glare at Jesse.

"You never told me your friend was Benjamin Applebaum!" she hiss-whispers.

Of course Beca Mitchell knew about Applebaum before she ever heard the name Jesse Swanson. Beca Michaels didn't though, and that's who she is right now.

He raises a single eyebrow and smirks at her, "Why? Is he someone important?"

"Dude, you know— "

Of course by then Benji has made his way over and Jesse is getting up out of his beanbag to wrap his friend in a big, tight, hug. After a moment they let go and Jesse turns back to Beca, who has of course scrambled awkwardly to stand and is nervously wiping her hands on her dress and trying to find somewhere to set her beer. Nowhere in sight.

"Benji, this is Beca. You remember I was telling you about her."

Beca makes her eyes go wide at the same time that Benji turns to her and smiles, already reaching out to shake her hand.

After a bit of negotiating the beer in her hands, they meet.

"Oh, right, yeah Beca. Jesse has said so much about you, it is just, absolutely lovely to finally meet you."

She blanches, and glances at the other man before looking back at Applebaum.

"Dude, I- uh, I- it's an honor."

He blushes very bashfully, "T-thank you, that's- um, I mean you're very nice- to say that, um, to me."

"Seriously, dude, I've been watching your work for years. What you're doing now, with adaptive switching protocols for load-sharing using neural-nets is just… I think you have a real chance of breaking Amazon's stranglehold on the market. Plus the rumors about your new compression rates for data storage are just… "

Beca has spent the last year and a half preparing for exactly this moment, absorbing every bit of scattered trivia and technical knowledge she can to build up her persona for exactly this moment. She has his attention completely.

Roughly fifteen minutes after she's thoroughly dragged him into conversations, Emily slips away to 'find the little girls room.' She doesn't come back for forty-five minutes, but she does come back. No one comes barging in after her, or whispers in Applebaum's ears mysteriously.

*  
*

Nearly three hours later, they pile back into the luxury sedan and pull out of the gravel lot and back onto the isolated country road leading up to Applebaum's estate. Beca has a card in her pocket with his email and personal number on it, as well as a very slight buzz.

Emily hums, pleased, from behind the wheel.

"You did it," Beca says.

What she doesn't say is that she thinks she knows why half the invitees to the party within the party were there. What she doesn't say is that she thinks this whole op has been blown wide open, that sometimes when the world opens a window for you it's not just a window but a whole goddamn auditorium and that Beca wouldn't have rather had anyone else with her for it.

She reaches out, takes Emily's hand off the gear shifter and interweaves their fingers.

*  
*

"Urp," Benji covers his mouth as the bubbles in his stomach finally work their way up.

"Here," Jesse hands him a glass of fizzing ginger ale.

"Thanks."

Glancing over at the clock he sees it's two-thirty and takes a long sip. All of the guests are gone and the house is blessedly quiet again after hours and hours of so much noise.

He wants to curl up in bed and sleep the sleep of the dead for the next three weeks. But he can't because part of him still isn't sure he's doing the right thing- well no, he knows it's the right thing, Benji just doesn't know if it's the smart thing. The people he works with…

"Are you sure she— "

"Yes," Jesse says, rubbing a hand on his back as he comes up beside him.

"But how do you know it'll work like— "

"Hey," Jesse's voice is sharper than it usually is, but there's affection behind it, as he comes around in front of Benji, "I know it'll work because it was _your_ idea," he cups his face with both hands, gently stroking the side of his chin, "You'll find whatever backdoor they put into your system, you'll make it your own, and then you… Benji Applebaum, are going to feed them every last bit of information you have on those bastards and make sure they pay. Okay?"

He nods, weakly. Jesse isn't satisfied and his voices come, sharp, again.

"Okay?"

"Yeah," Benji nods, "Yeah, you're right."

Looking up into Jesse's eyes he smiles, and then they're kissing, soft and slow and sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest, this one ended up surprising me. Struggled for the longest time to even get started... even tossed out about 800 words and then, bam! I had a lot fo fun in the end with this one. Probably my second favorite this year.


End file.
